Planet Hollywood
by GIRL IN STORY
Summary: The Losers were at Planet Hollywood when it happened.


"You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think."

— Christopher Robin, Winnie the Pooh.

The Losers were at Planet Hollywood when it happened.

Paris had a lot of beautiful and historical sites: The Conciergerie, where Marie Antoinette was held before her execution; Saint-Séverin, with its Jean Bazaine stained glass; the tomb of Napoleon at Les Invalides; the Père Lachaise cemetery and Oscar Wilde's art deco tomb, encased in glass because the lipsticked kisses of gay and literary pilgrims were eroding the stone.

Exactly two of them were wheelchair accessible.

So the Losers went to Euro Disney. Only Ben was disappointed. Richie made it up to him by listening to an hour-long eulogy of Haussmann on the RER ride to Marne-la-Vallée.

Eddie pushed Richie up the ramp to Sleeping Beauty's Castle and back down to the dungeon, where a massive mechanical dragon breathed steam on them. He pushed Richie through Final Frontierland and the quick-access line for the Superman: Roller Coaster of Steel that sent them flying over Main Street USA. He ranted about how disabled people were no longer allowed to skip the line.

"You just want another go on Dumbo, don't you?" asked Richie.

On the Peter Pan ride, Bev had gotten a picture of Bill turned around in his flying ship to take a picture of her. The best part was the sign on the dashboard of her own ship, which said, "Surveillez vos enfants." She had already set it as his contact photo in her phone.

Eddie wanted matching photos with Richie, and Dumbo was the only ride that went up and down enough to accommodate their height difference. They were both seated, but Richie had what Eddie referred to as "the torso of a car dealership wind sock guy." Mealtimes were the only times Richie felt tall anymore.

"Fuck you, pal," said Eddie.

"Next time we'll go to Disney Moon," said Mike. "Musk says he'll still fastpass disabled people, because the low gravity will allow them to actually move fast."

"The future is now," intoned Richie. "So where's my hoverchair? Anyone remember when the future was supposed to be all moon colonies and meals in pill form?"

"I've seen you with a cheeseburger," said Eddie. "You would not want meals in pill form."

"We aren't promised moon colonies anymore," said Bill. "We're promised cyberpunk dystopias with totalitarian dictators. So at least we're getting more realistic."

They rounded out the day with dinner at Planet Hollywood. This iteration had the restaurant's classic globe shape, which a long staircase leading up to the door. Fortunately, there was an elevator in the gift shop.

They were seated around a large circular table, in the middle of the large circular room. Holographic displays were mounted at intervals along the walls, in between props from famous movies.

Richie tried to explain the difference between holograms and projections, but Eddie pretended to fall asleep. Technically, the Tupac they wheeled out every year to sing bird songs at the Cahuilla Music Festival was a projection, but that was just for the sake of tradition.

Most dead musicians were holograms. Some of them had been holograms for a lot longer than anyone realized.

Planet Hollywood's holograms were channeling the news, Professional Wrestling with the Stars, and a McDonald's commercial, which seemed ironic.

It was like walking through the ballroom in the Phantom Manor (Euro Disney's Haunted Mansion), except that the ghosts were weathergirls, luchadores and clowns. So actually quite terrifying.

The Losers didn't realize the news was of the celebrity variety until the weathergirl predicted a stormy front for Anna Kendrick's new relationship with Lindsey Lohan, but it was Planet Hollywood, so that probably wasn't true.

In the mirrored blackness of the display case for Space Balls The Flamethrower "A Children's Toy," Richie could see people trying to sneak pictures of him. He thought it was just paranoia until he yawned and half the restaurant yawned too.

The Losers were starting to debate dessert (with visual aids on Eddie's part, even though Richie had told him to leave the calorie counter at home), when a hologram to their right said, "Richie Tozier."

What the celebrity news anchor sitting in front of an SNL screencap of Richie as Stefon actually said was, "An anonymous source has leaked footage of comedian 'Trashmouth' Richie Tozier's secret gay wedding."

"My what?" said Richie, loud enough that the people at their surrounding tables looked at him. Then at the hologram. Then back at him.

"What is this?" asked Eddie.

"I don't know!"

"What do you mean you don't know?"

"I don't remember," said Richie, in a whisper-shout, because there were enough rumors about his alleged drug addictions. According to TMZ, he was addicted to meth, coke, cough syrup, pornography, and addiction treatment. Only two of those were true, and only if pictures of Eddie framing his divorce certificate counted as porn. (It absolutely did.)

"Were you high?" asked Eddie.

"Et tu, Eds?" asked Richie, but then, "Yeah, probably."

Someone took a picture of them. They weren't trying to be subtle now. A group of German tourists were asking to take a selfie with Richie. When he didn't move, they did it anyway.

Richie could only stare at the hologram, which was now showing footage of his secret gay wedding.

It was early 2000, which would have been obvious enough without the grainy video quality, because the decorations included black balloons that said, "Y2K Compliance Party."

Richie's hairstyle was still firmly in the nineties. It was clearly intended to look like Kurt Cobain, but Cobain didn't have jet black curls, so he looked more like Cher in Moonstruck.

It was obviously a wedding— there was an aisle, and a cake, and a banner that said, "Mr. & Mrs." with the "s" crossed out, but they wouldn't have been able to tell who the groom was, because everyone was wearing Hawaiian shirts.

Of course, the news anchor had already told them. "Trashmouth" Richie Tozier was the groom.

Well, one of them.

The canned music ended, and when the next song came on, the volume had been dialed up to whatever was considered high in the nineties.

It was Africa by Toto.

It was Eddie.

He started walking down the aisle. The Richie in the video smiled so wide it made Pennywise's Glasgow Grin look downright demure. Honestly, he creeped himself out a little, but the Eddie in the video was smiling back.

The Richie in real life made a sort of keening noise. He didn't dare look at Eddie, or any of the other Losers, for that matter. He didn't move. He didn't even breathe until Eddie thrust his aspirator into Richie's hands (after taking a hit first.)

Tweeted reactions scrolled like ticker tape along the bottom of the hologram.

_Megyn Kelly_

_i knew it_

_Moms Against Gays_

_never watching that fag's shows again #boycottrichietozier_

_theinternetisaweboflies_

_Couldn't he afford a better wedding?_

_emojisarestatussymbols_

_IDGAF about the gay shit but those decorations are iconic._

_John Mulaney_

_Big fat fuck you to TMZ for outing someone in the year of our good lord 2020. BoycottTMZ #IStandwithRichieTozier_

"According to the anonymous source," the anchor was saying, "this footage was found on an archived MySpace page belonging to Richie Tozier, who is famous for jokes about his hopefully-fake girlfriend."

_emojisarestatussymbols_

_the fuck is a myspace?_

_theinternetisaweboflies_

_MySpace was like Facebook. But whenever you opened a new page, music started playing. And you could never find the pause button._

_emojisarestatussymbols_

_how horrible_

_theinternetisaweboflies_

_And the music was usually 50 Cent._

_emojisarestatussymbols_

_they charged for it?_

That was all Richie saw before he was ushered into a backroom, along with the rest of the Losers. It looked like an office. It looked like a good enough place for life as he knew it to end.

Eddie tapped Richie's shoulder. Only then did Richie see the aspirator, offered for a second time. He took it, without looking up at Eddie.

"You know," he said, because his mouth kept working, even his brain had stopped, like a chicken with its head cut off, except not, because at least they died eventually. "The worst part about the whole wheelchair thing is that I can't make short jokes anymore."

"At least you have perspective," said Eddie, in a voice that sounded minimally like his own.

"Yeah," said Richie, in a voice that sounded nothing like his own, even though he'd heard his own recorded, slowed down, sped up, and fed through a pitch shifter until he sounded like Siri's Morgan Freeman setting. "Wait. Was that a joke? That was so ableist."

"Who the fuck was filming us?" asked Eddie, which was a good question— it was a great question because it wasn't all the other ones.

"Uh?" said Bill. "I think you were? I mean. Audra and I filmed our wedding. I think it's, you know, traditional."

"Oh, yes, because that was the definition of a traditional wedding," Eddie all but snarled.

Richie tried to disguise his flinch as a cough. He triggered the aspirator and coughed for real. It still tasted like battery acid.

"Maybe someone tried to blackmail me, and I didn't get the message, because I have AT&T," he said. "It wouldn't be the first time."

"You've been blackmailed?" asked Ben, looking concerned, because he was Ben.

"I do a lot of stupid things," said Richie, and Eddie looked offended. "Present company excepted."

Eddie blushed. Richie reviewed the sentence in his head and blushed harder.

"Are you guys okay?" Bev asked carefully.

Richie shrugged. Eddie pointed at him and nodded.

"Do you want to talk about it?" she tried again.

"I don't know what to say," said Eddie.

"Is that because you didn't think we'd ever find out you and Richie were secretly married in the tackiest wedding since Hillary Duff married Lindsey Lohan, or is it because you don't remember getting married?" asked Mike, of all people.

"That one," said Richie. "The uh, second one."

"But you remember everything else, right?" said Bill. "Why not this?"

Richie shrugged again. "Maybe because we weren't in Derry. I don't know where we were, but it definitely wasn't Derry, where gay marriage will not be legal until the year 3000, optimistically."

"Where was gay marriage legalized in 2000?" asked Bev.

Eddie pulled out his phone and started tapping. "Uh, literally just the Netherlands."

"No wonder I didn't recognize anyone in the wedding party," said Richie.

"No wonder it didn't come up when I married Myra," said Eddie. "Wait. How did we even have a relationship? Wouldn't we forget as soon as— as soon as we... left each other?"

"Maybe it had to be for more than a few days, you know, so forgetting seemed more natural."

"Magic doesn't have to be inconspicuous, Richie. It's magic."

Richie glared at him. "Well, I don't know!"

"Of course you don't! You've never been inconspicuous a day in your life! Why the hell was everyone at your wedding wearing Hawaiian shirts?"

"It was your wedding too!" Richie couldn't keep glaring at Eddie; he was going to get a crick in his neck. He glared at the floor instead.

"I guarantee you the Hawaiian shirts were not my decision!"

Eddie sat in the desk chair, but Richie kept his eyes fixed on the floor. It had beige industrial carpeting so rough it might as well have been sanding pads.

"But I was," he told the carpet.

Eddie leaned forward, wrapped his fingers around the back of Richie's neck, and tilted both of their heads.

He thought Richie was the brave one, even after the whole Winnie-the-Pooh speech, just because Richie had thrown himself bodily in the path of an eldritch demon claw and lost the use of his legs to save Eddie's life after witnessing a portentous vision that still wracked him with nightmares so hard he fell out of bed and had to spend the rest of the night on the floor, but come on.

That had been nothing but selfish.

Eddie was the brave one, which he proved once and for all by kissing Richie in front of God, the Losers, and some waiters from the Euro Disney Planet Hollywood.

On the lips.

Richie saw his life flash before his eyes, but not the bad one. Like some sort of Deadlight's afterglow, he saw his life with Eddie, as it should be.

As it would be.

Richie sued Myra for invasion of privacy, which she had committed by hiring someone on Craigslist to find dirt on her ex-husband. Richie's only (official) comment on the lawsuit was made via Twitter.

_MomsAgainstGays (I know it's you), I understand why you thought it was okay to out someone. I also keep forgetting it's no longer 2001. Especially since Eddie and I are still in our honeymoon phase._

He included a photo that very nearly violated Twitter's decency bylaws.

(It turned out that they had actually gotten married in 2001, when the Dutch law went into effect, and Richie was just a balloon hoarder. It was on his list of things to discuss in therapy, when he finally found a therapist he could trust not to leak their sessions to the press.)

Instead of suing the hacker, Richie employed him for the same task and successfully recovered a several dozen wedding photos and three more videos, only one of which he had to delete again.

This didn't stop Eddie from insisting on a renewal of vows with a proper service, tuxedos, and a cake that didn't look like a hamburger.

Richie made a more professional statement concerning his temporary amnesia. He already had amnesia in his documented medical history, but only because he needed some way to explain his mental breakdown and subsequent axing of his manager (metaphorical) and former classmate/serial killer (literal), and amnesia was a tough story to fuck up.

Eddie also had amnesia in his documented medical history, but only because he had pretty much everything in his documented medical history.

Richie became a disabled gay icon, and there were so many new jokes he was allowed to tell, but his sense of belonging in both of those communities was an ongoing struggle, so he stuck to jokes about Eddie's fannypacks. His comeback was unprecedented, and he could actually afford the fancy wedding insisted upon by his ridiculous fucking husband.

Richie opened his eyes, and Eddie was looking at him all anxious, like there was anyone in the world who wouldn't want him.

"Maybe," Richie said. "Maybe we'll get our memories back if we re-enact it."

"The wedding?" Eddie asked, tentative and trusting, like he always was when accidentally setting up a joke for Richie.

"I was thinking more like the wedding night."

"Beep beep," said Eddie, "Dear."


End file.
